V o L u m e I : a d

Nations’ (UN) organizing conference in San Francisco

(1945–1946). In February 1947, with support from John

Foster Dulles, Hiss became head of the Carnegie Endow-

ment for International Peace.

In August 1948 Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed

ex-communist, accused Hiss of having been a member of

the Communist Party in the 1930s and of having betrayed

State Department secrets to the Soviets. Hiss strenuously

denied the charges under oath. He was subsequently

indicted by a grand jury for perjury, as the statute of limi-

tations for treason had expired, and was bound over for

trial, which resulted in a hung jury in July 1949. Then, in a

highly publicized retrial in January 1950, Hiss was found

guilty and served forty-four months in the Lewisburg Fed-

eral Penitentiary. He continued to assert his innocence and

so too did a large and influential body of supporters, which

precipitated one of the most intense and enigmatic debates

of the entire Cold War.

Archival revelations in the 1990s, including those from

Russian sources, vindicated neither Hiss nor his defenders.

Historical evidence now seems to suggest that Hiss was

indeed guilty of treason. The strange case of Alger Hiss

was a defining episode not only in the Cold War but also in

modern American politics. It rallied conservatives, gave

birth to the excesses of McCarthyism, and spotlighted

Hiss’s nemesis, the little-known California Congressman

Richard M. Nixon, who would later go on to become a U.S.

senator, vice president, and president. Hiss died on 15 No-

vember 1996 in New York City.

Phillip Deery

See also

Chambers, Whittaker; McCarthy, Joseph Raymond; McCarthy Hearings; McCarthy-

ism; Nixon, Richard Milhous

References

Lowenthal, John. “Venona and Alger Hiss.” Intelligence and National Security 15(3)

(2000): 98–130.

Weinstein, Allen. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. New York: Knopf, 1978.

White, G. Edward. Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Vietnamese nationalist, founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party (1930),

and first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1946–1969). Ho

912

Ho Chi Minh

U.S. citizen Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 as

part of an investigation into an alleged spy ring. Hiss was

accused of being a communist and of sharing state secrets

with the Soviet Union. The matter of his guilt or innocence

is still debated today. (Library of Congress)

Ho Chi Minh

(1890–1969)

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is considered the most influential political figure of mod-

ern Vietnam. Born Nguyen Sinh Cung on 19 May 1890

in Kimlien, Annam, Vietnam, his father was a Confucian

scholar who had served in the Vietnamese imperial bureau-

cracy but resigned to protest the French occupation of his

country. Nguyen received his secondary education at the

prestigious National Academy, a French-style lycée in Hue.

In 1911 he hired on as a merchant ship cook, traveling to

the United States, Africa, and Europe. He then became first

a photography assistant and then an assistant pastry chef in

London. With the beginning of World War I, Nguyen

moved to Paris, where he became active in the French

Socialist Party. Changing his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc

(Nguyen the Patriot), he became a leader in the large Indo-

Chinese community in France. After the war, he helped

draft a petition to the Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Con-

ference demanding self-determination for colonial peoples;

the petition was ignored.

When the Socialist Party split in 1920, Nguyen became

one of the founders of the new French Communist Party.

He spent the early 1920s in Moscow at the headquarters

of the Communist International (Comintern). In 1924 he

went to Guangzhou (Canton), China, and during the next

two years worked to form a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary

organization in French Indochina. In 1925 he organized

the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League as a training

ground for the future Vietnamese Communist Party. In

1929 he presided over a meeting in Hong Kong that

brought several communist factions together, forming a

single Vietnamese Communist Party, later renamed the

Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).

By the early 1940s Nguyen had taken the name Ho Chi

Minh (Bearer of Light). He left Hong Kong and returned

to Vietnam in early 1941, where he formed a broad nationalist alliance, the

League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh), to combat both the

French and Japanese occupations. The Viet Minh generally downplayed

orthodox communist ideology and emphasized anti-imperialism and land

reform, although it was dominated by the ICP.

During World War II Ho shuttled between Vietnam and China to build

support for his movement. He was held in detention for a year in China by

the anticommunist Chinese Guomindang (GMD, Nationalists), who released

him in 1944. He had also worked with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services

(OSS). When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Viet Minh occupied

Hanoi, and Ho established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North

Vietnam). He became president of the newly formed nation on 2 March

1946. Ho sought to avoid hostilities with France, but differences between the

Viet Minh nationalists and the French, who steadfastly refused to give up

Ho Chi Minh

913

Pictured here in 1954, Vietnamese communist and nation-

alist Ho Chi Minh founded the Indochina Communist

Party in 1930 and was president of the Democratic

Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) from 1945 to

1969. (Library of Congress)

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